The State Worker

Bee Capitol Bureau reporter Jack Chang is at the state Republican Party convention, where Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman held an impromptu press conference this afternoon. She laid out her ideas for changing the state's public employee pension system, which she said was unaffordable.

Among her proposals:

-- Increase the retirement age for most state employees from 55 to 65.

-- Increase length of vesting periods.

-- Raise employee contributions from 5 to 10 percent of salaries.

-- New employees come in on "a different deal."

Summing up, Whitman said, "I think the era of a defined benefit program is over relative to a defined contribution plan."

Our news story Thursday about the impact of state employee furloughs on the government's long-term liabilities noted that not all departments in the state report their leave numbers to the controller's office.

Most do, using the California Leave Accounting System. But as Norman Williams,a deputy director at the Department of Health Care Services, tells us, departments are permitted to use stand-alone leave accounting systems or the Human Resources Information System that is maintained by the Office of Technology Services.

The Public Health and the Health Care Services departments use HRIS.

We asked Williams for some history. Why don't those departments all report leave time stats to the Controller? What's the history?

We asked SCO spokesman Jacob Roper the same thing after he sent us this list of departments that don't report leave numbers to the controller.

We'll let you know what we hear.

The California Citizens Compensation Commission, which sets pay rates for the state's elected officials, will meet in Burbank on April 22 to consider to review the salaries and benefits. For details, click here for the public meeting notice posted this week on the Commission's website.

Click here to see the current salaries for California's elected state workers, whose pay and per diem was cut 18 percent in December, despite efforts to overturn the commission's decision to give lawmakers a haircut. Click here for that story.

IMAGE: Sacramento Bee file, 2008 / Brian Baer

This morning's "Recommended Links" include:

Gov. Jennifer Granholm applauds bill to lure 47,000 public employees, including teachers, into retirement
Michigan is considering legislation that would allow eligible state employees to retire by Oct. 1 to get a slightly larger retirement check and keep free dental and vision coverage in retirement. But eligible employees who don't retire would have to start contributing 3 percent toward their pensions and would have to pay for dental and vision coverage when they retire. State workers who stay on the job also would have to cover 20 percent of their health care premiums.

N.J. employees would pay for parking in Gov. Christie's privatization plan
State employees would have to pay for parking as one piece of a privatization effort Gov. Chris Christie launched today, according to two state officials familiar with his plans.
Christie, who created a task force to find savings from privatizing government jobs and functions amid a budget crisis, declined to say which areas would be turned over to the private sector.

Editorial: Politicians, CEOs need to sacrifice, too
In these difficult economic times, we see too often examples of leaders who refuse to share in the sacrifice and lead by example. This failure of leadership is on ample display as Michigan grapples with a worsening budget crisis.

Former Hevesi Aide Pleads Guilty in Pension Case
The former chief investment officer for the state's pension fund pleaded guilty to securities fraud on Wednesday, saying he helped steer pension money to political contributors to former State Comptroller Alan G. Hevesi and to companies that paid kickbacks to Mr. Hevesi's top political consultant, Hank Morris.

The links to these and other stories of state worker interest are on the right side of this page.

We can never get everything we learn into a news story. "From the notebook" posts give you some of the extra details behind the news.

One of the stories we have in today's Bee looks at the impact of state worker furloughs on banked vacation time. As part of our reporting, we asked the Department of Finance for help on compensation rules concerning cash-outs. Department spokesman H.D. Palmer sent us the code, which you can read by clicking this link.

And click here to download the data we used for the story. Hat tip to Bee colleague Phillip Reese for quickly building the spreadsheet from stats provided by the State Controller's Office.

IMAGE: www.freeclipart.com

Senator Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, has introduced a bill that would curb pension spiking through a review process that would look for instances of employees padding retirement with one-time bonuses, accrued vacation time and end-of-career promotions.

Click here to read SB 1425.

Blog backs review your thoughtful and provocative online comments, amplify points, answer questions, correct our mistakes and humbly accept your warranted criticism.

Writing The State Worker blog, which draws tens of thousands of users from inside and outside of state government, means that nobody will like every post. Take our recent telework poll, for example:

Mar. 9 Poll: Telework and remote computer access

Here's a criticism from prolific blog user Marlinman:

It's nothing new for Jon to come up with these stupid surveys meant to discredit State employees (which are either responded to by brain-dead employees or the normal "hacks" that are filled with hate anyway)! ... I agree with maxter151, why doesn't the bee expect Jon to write this column for free, because stunts like this are worthless!!!

Read our response to this comment and more of our blog backs by clicking the following link.

Ponder this: If the state eventually loses the furlough litigation now in the courts, how will it fairly compensate employees for time worked under self-directed furloughs?

For an answer, look to State Compensation Insurance Fund. Two court decisions last year restored the roughly 8,000 employees there to full hours and wages and awarded back pay plus 7 percent.

The money part is done. The fund, which operates administratively and financially independent of state government, paid about $25 million to employees for lost wages. Another $565,000 went to interest on those wages. A few employees haven't received all the money, but "we're 99.9999 percent done," State Fund spokeswoman Jennifer Vargen told us last week.

But compensating employees for their time? That's much more complicated, as we noted in this blog post several months ago.

Vargen said that the Department of Personnel Administration prefers a "global" solution instead of an employee-by-employee review. She referred us to DPA for more.

So we asked DPA spokeswoman Lynelle Jolley. "Until there's a final ruling on our appeal in this case, there's no need for DPA to resolve this 'time' issue," she said in an e-mail.

Some of the stories you'll find under our "Recommended Links" on the right side of this page:

No raises for teachers, other state employees
North Carolina's teachers and state employees can expect another year without a pay raise. Gov. Bev Perdue said that, while salaries will remain flat in the coming budget year, she aims to pay back the 1/2-percent pay cut that state workers and teachers received last year in the form of a two-day furlough.

N.J. Gov. Chris Christie says he's stuck with bill for state worker 7 percent pay hike
Calling it an "exquisite pair of handcuffs" as he tries to plug a huge budget gap, Gov. Chris Christie today said he must follow a controversial deal former Gov. Jon Corzine gave unionized state workers last year that calls for a 7 percent pay raise in the upcoming fiscal year and bars him from ordering layoffs before January.

Bill would require state's public workers to live in N.J.
Some top lawmakers have this message for public workers: If you work in Jersey, you should live in Jersey.

Gibbons to kill four-day work week for state workers
Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons will veto the bill putting the state on a four-day, 10-hour work week and extending the furlough system that mandates an unpaid day off for state workers each month -- the equivalent of a 4.6 percent pay cut. The furlough system drew complaints from the majority of state workers because nearly 2,000 Department of Corrections workers were exempted.

Legislature OKs expanded death benefits for public safety workers killed on duty
The Washington state Legislature has approved a measure that expands benefits for families of public safety workers killed while on duty.

The Bee's state employee pay database has been updated with figures for the 2009 calendar year. Our resident database maestro, Phillip Reese, set up the site to include several new features:

• 2009 data for all civil service workers.
• Past and present wages -- to view the effects of furloughs, for instance -- all at once.
• New summary tables showing highest-paid civil service workers, CSU workers, UC workers and legislative staffers.
• New details page that breaks down each person's salary -- overtime, other pay, regular pay -- for the past three years.
• Updated notes section explaining the fine print behind the numbers.

Click here to check out the updated database.